Reinventing yourself in midlife
Smart Women’s Dating Podcast host, Life Coach Lærke Nielsen invited me to join her in conversation this week on the show.
Lærke is a Love and Confidence Coach for strong, independent women, who feel competent and capable in their career and life in general, but who experience that their love life is difficult and hard.
We had such a great conversation this week about reinventing ourselves in midlife. Lærke and I trained together as coaches in 2020 having both decided very intentionally to reinvent ourselves with a change of career direction in our late 40s.
We invite you to listen in and learn about some of the ways that a new mindset can support your transition through perimenopause.
Read the transcript here
Hey there. Today again, I have a treat for you. Yes. I know it's a lot. Last week I gave you a free masterclass and the week before I gave you a friendship coach, you must be thinking, will she be able to go on and on like this. Christmas every single day. And the answer is yes. Because this week, I'm inviting you to listen in on a conversation I had with Jo Renshaw, who is a life coach who helps women navigate midlife and set an example for daughters and the younger generation of women in general. On what is possible and doable for a woman in midlife. And this can include finding a new partner or changing your career in your late forties. Or even doing both as Joe has actually done. In this chat, we talk about so many things relating to this exciting, but also challenging time where women enter perimenopause. And we talk about being single in your late forties, having narratives about what you should be doing. Where you should be. What is possible and what is appropriate and deciding to break free from the socialisation that tells women what we can and can't do in midlife.
I know you're going to love this and don't forget to check out the links in the show notes. Jo has a special offer at the moment. And you don't want to miss out on that. Enjoy the episode.
So today I have the pleasure of talking to a very special guest Jo Renshaw, who is a friend and a fellow student of mine back when we were training to become life coaches. Joe is a life coach for women who are navigating midlife. And I'll just let you tell the listeners exactly what you do.
Yeah. Hello. Thank you. I am Jo Renshaw. I'm a life coach for women in their 40s who are traversing through perimenopause and I help women be an amazing example to our daughters. And this applies even if you're not a mom.
Because we have collective daughters, right? There are many, many young women coming after us, generations coming after us who are looking to us as examples of how to be an older woman. I remember looking up to older women and thinking, well, what is life going to be like then? Yeah. And that is, I think, so valuable because it really is a question of showing instead of explaining what to do, showing how to live life and how to overcome challenges and how to go through menopause or perimenopause and all other challenges that can show up in this time of life.
Yeah. And in fact, these nuances of terms weren't talked about when my mother was going through her menopause. So it was just menopause and that was it. It wasn't talked about. Now we have more nuanced areas of premenopause, perimenopause, post menopause, now all these different understandings of a years and years long process that women go through.
Yeah. Maybe we should just start by having a bit of clarity of what these different concepts are? Because I know it's only recently I myself discovered what is perimenopause. You know, we all know there's something called menopause. And I always struggle a bit with the word because it's not actually a pause, right?
It's the end of something and something new, right? So it's like, we're trying to make it look nicer or sound. It's just a pause, but it's not really a pause. And there's no reason to. feel bad about that. I mean, in Denmark, we have, the word is transition age, when you translate directly, so we're transitioning into another age. Maybe you can, cast some light on what is, you said premenopause, also perimenopause, and of course the post. I mean, maybe you can just explain what is it all.
Yeah, so, my understanding is these four phases. So we're pre-menopausal from kind of our late thirties. And I do remember things being a little bit different in my late thirties, I was beginning to have disturbed night's sleep, that was the main thing really for me.
It's going to be different for every woman, but from your late thirties, hormones start to change. And then in our 40s, mid to late, we come into perimenopause and in perimenopause our menstrual cycle begins to become longer. So it's not that same regular, for many women, it's a 28 day cycle. Meno means month.
It relates to month and the moon and the cycle of the moon we know is 29 and a half days. Menstrual cycles are about 28 days. So, in premenopause, it'll be about 28 days. Then after that it can go to about 90 days, so it'll be Oh wow. 90 day cycle. But can it also go shorter? Yeah. For someone when I think is like, yeah, it can, it can be erratic,shorter to longer. I don't know about you. I've experienced all sorts. Yeah. Mine has been very short. Okay. So I just get out of it and then the new one comes again. And this is, I think the really important thing to note, there's no this is going to be exactly this way for women. What I'm talking about is a very broad brushstrokes.
These very broad phases that will show up with specific differences for each woman. Okay. But broadly speaking, we've got this premenopause, this perimenopausal time, and then we have menopause, which is one moment. So menopause is diagnosed once a woman has gone for 12 months without a period. And after those 12 months on that day, then we can say that is when menopause has happened.
Then we are postmenopausal. Ah, okay. That makes sense. So menopause is actually just that one day. And then it's post menopause. Same as when we're, in puberty, menarche, the starting of the period, is this one day, the first period.
And so, from the late, mid, late 40s perimenopause begins.
Is there any rule of how long does it normally take to be in that phase or is that also very individual before the menopause?
Yeah, it's very individual. Okay. But it seems to be from what I'm reading and what I'm hearing around about seven or eight years.
When we hear about all the symptoms, all the challenges that we go through in that period of time, is that related to the perimenopause time? Yeah. And does it continue postmenopause as well?
Again, very different things postmenopausally. So, perimenopause. can come with a list of specific symptoms and changes. So you might hear women talking about night sweats, hot flushes, um, mood swings, anxiety, weight gain, breast tenderness, loss of libido, all these things that I've heard women complaining about and talking about like, Oh, these horrors are going to happen in perimenopause. And then after menopause, hormones settle in a different way.
And it doesn't all go away, but the extremes of that are not so extreme. I think about perimenopause as an energetically turbulent time. Yeah. So all these things that we're hearing talked about, all these symptoms of our energy. Moving rapidly through our systems.
I think that's a nice way of expressing it because it's more neutral, right? It just makes it maybe easier to accept that there are some changes here and it's turbulent and it's related to energies. There are, as you say, there are mood swings that can be sleep disorders that can be, you know, also extreme fatigue. I hear someone and I've been myself with sometimes needing to take naps every single day, and all sorts of symptoms that we might not know about. And I'm so happy that we live in a time now and I think it's going to be much easier for the younger generation that now is starting to open up a little bit more and we get more information about what is this.
Because in the past it was just hot flashes, and a few other symptoms and, but we didn't really know much about all the other symptoms that also follow and where women might have some really strong symptoms and think there's something wrong with them, especially on the mental part, like feeling depressed and there's something wrong with me, but it's really true.
It’s very normal because of hormonal changes that affect all our body, including the brain, right? I think it can really help a lot of women to understand what are the symptoms? And somehow it seems to be much more turbulent than puberty.
Right. I was thinking about that because it does have a lot of similarities to puberty, I think, in that it's a big change, it's turbulence, and some of the symptoms are the same as well. So, for example, brain fog. Brain fog is something that can happen in perimenopause. And I, for one, have had and do experience that. I have days and moments where it's almost like I can't catch hold of my thinking. I can't get it straight, if you like, I can't think in straight lines. And the same thing does happen in puberty.
You see teenagers who are vacant and absent, teenage girls and boys as well. Their brains are undergoing a massive rewiring. So certain aspects of the brain will go completely offline. They're actually not needed anymore. And in the same way, in perimenopause, certain aspects of the brain go completely offline.
They're just not needed anymore. Those parts of the brain that we used maybe to nurture young are not needed because our little ones have grown up. But with that pruning away of certain neural pathways comes this mental brain fog. And yeah, like you say, so many women think that means there's something wrong with them.
But there's a reason for that. And it goes back to, if you think about the climate that we grew up in, in the 70s, and kind of before that, and before that, the way society has thought about and the menopausal woman. Yeah, I think about the sentence, the certain stories I had spoken about older women when I was growing up.
Yeah, forgetful, emotional. Too angry, tired, exhausted, not capable of anything. Women have been very, very criticised over not just decades, but many, many long centuries. But certainly what I've seen is older women being criticised for what they're going through. And it's become, it's almost as if it's been turned in on ourselves.
Oh, I have so many thoughts when you say that, because There's a lot of stigma. I agree. There's a lot of stigma about women after menopause. It's almost like This is where everything shuts down. The party is over, the shop is closed and there's no more fun to be had now. We are invisible and we should just go and sit somewhere in our flat by ourselves.
This leads me to, because when we talk about all this, the physical part of pain menopause, where we can see, and also menopause, we can find a lot about hormonal replacement treatment. And I think a lot of us are confused whether is it something for me or not, vitamin supplements, taking extra protein and fibre, doing all sorts of exercise and so on.
One thing that we see very, very little and rarely ever see anything about is the mindset around this process, this long phase going through that. And that's part of what you work on. So that's why I think it's so, so valuable what you're doing because mindset is relevant for all of it.
We can really change how we experience these years, regardless of the circumstance, basically. Of course, there are some circumstances we need to manage, but it can really change a lot. It's also related to this way we see ourselves as someone who has less and less value in general, not like men when they grow older, they're like silver fox and they're like, you can see in, actors and so on. They can become, , in higher demand than women after a certain age, if they don't do the Botox and all this, or they can't get a job anymore, in certain professions.
I would like to talk a little bit about this, how we value ourselves and the mindset around it. The power of having all this life experience and having a different feeling about who we are and our confidence and so on. So I'm curious to hear the challenges that your clients have that they come to you to get support. What could that be? How could you help someone, if they come and tell you, I really feel like I'm about to become invisible, I have no more value, the party is over, I just entered menopause, or I'm in this turbulent phase of my life.
I completely agree with what you say. All the practical tools for going through perimenopause, there's so much information on the internet. So whether or not we choose to take HRT, what we are going to eat at this time, what exercise we're going to do at this time. And I do talk about that because obviously I'm doing it for myself, but what I'm doing isn't going to necessarily be the right solution for the next woman. But my approach is about mindset, as you say, because things are changing so much within us internally that I think we're required to make a whole new relationship to our self.
And this is for me, the really fascinating and exciting thing about being a woman is that we get to transform ourselves and reinvent ourselves on more than one occasion. So yes, at puberty, although at puberty, we're not so aware of the fact that we are being reinvented, we don't have the cognitive awareness to go into that intentionally.
It can come for a woman again at pregnancy, maybe once, maybe twice, maybe many times if a woman has children and then at menopause, we know it's going to happen, right? So we can decide how we want to navigate it, how we want to be, think and feel about all the changes that are going on throughout and who we want to be during and afterwards as well.
All those things are within our conscious control. And if we've got to this point in our life, our late 40s, early 50s, we've got an amazing lot of life experience and we can either listen to what old societal stories have to say about the older woman, or we can choose an entirely new narrative for ourself that may never have been thought about a possibility that may never have been thought about, and that to me is really exciting.
Do we ever, did our mothers think, who do I want to be in my late fifties and sixties, what's next for me, you know, in a way that would energise them and make them feel engaged and excited about…’cause we might be here for another 40 or 50 years, hopefully. Midlife. It's called midlife, right? It's not the end of life!
I feel so inspired by what you're saying there because it's really the whole thing of having this intentionality. And I think it's like we say, well, our mothers didn't do that because they didn't have that knowledge and they didn't have the skills of, deciding to be intentional.
A lot of people today don't do it either because they don't know that they have a choice to decide how do I want to be and who do I want to become? And what if we change the narrative? Let's do that. Let's change the narrative. I think we both have been in the situation where we were in our late forties and became single after a relationship.
And I remember thinking this was horrible, you know, having to put myself out there. Before I did that, I was having all these thoughts about being too old and the guys out there being too old as well. And what am I going to do? And this feels so awkward. After I had been dating for a couple of months, I was starting to think, well, it's almost like life begins at 50.
It's a new life that can begin. It's just a different life. But really, I was so surprised that it wasn't actually that hard. And it's just another experience and that you can bring, as you say, all that life experience and see things in a different way and feel more relaxed about some things and less self conscious in some ways also.
Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I was single for about three years in my late 40s. Yeah. And during that time, I can remember spending time in my flat alone and thinking, Oh, well my moments past. I have a lovely daughter. so perhaps that part of my life is complete and maybe I'm not supposed to meet anyone.
When I look back now, I can see my brain was making all these excuses and reasons for why I didn't need to go dating, I didn't need to go and see anyone. And I noticed that my brain was starting to show me pictures of, do you know who Miss Havisham is? She's a character in a Charles Dickens novel, who was jilted at the altar and she remains in her bridal gown for the rest of her life kind of haunting this dusty old apartment. I thought oh gosh, maybe I'm just gonna be like some mishandling character And I've got a couple of elderly aunts who are single and I Love them and I really admire and respect them and I thought maybe I'll just be that woman. And then I met someone, and my whole life changed all over again, which was a really lovely surprise to me.
But yeah going out and meeting someone did help me see like oh, hang on a minute. There's a whole other life waiting for me, and that actually is available to me whether I meet someone or not, by the way. But when it came to dating and meeting somebody it's been really fun to experience a relationship being an older woman and not wanting to have children anymore. Like that part of my life is done and my partner has got his children as well. This doesn't feel like any of my other relationships because the motivation is so different. But there isn't the drive to procreate and keep the generations going. We can just have fun together.
Yeah, that is the big difference, right? It's not about finding a potential parent. It's actually just enjoying your time together and having fun. And getting to know someone on a deeper level. So it's, it's very different to meet someone after 50 than it is in the twenties and thirties. And the fact that you said you were so surprised to see, okay, there's a whole other life here for me is also something I have experienced with other women who meet someone around that age, where we kind of, tell us what we're going to try, but when it happens, we get so surprised and we realise I, maybe I didn't even believe it, because why would I be so surprised now that it happened?
And this I think also is from this narrative that we are socialised to have about when is it too late? When are you too old? I mean, it's not that many years ago when you were a woman in your fifties you were labelled as really old and you were not supposed to go to a nightclub and dance, or you were not supposed to go out and have fun or do crazy things or whatever you want.
You should just be behaving at home with a cup of tea or a glass of water. So I think that even if we might see ourselves as, as modern women, we still have somewhere this narrative is like deeply founded in our brain that what are you supposed to do in our age and what is even possible.
And maybe we have this underneath all the other beliefs, we have a belief that it's going to be difficult to find a partner after a certain age, and you have to compromise a lot. You have to settle, and it cannot be the same, cannot be the same passion. It cannot be the same emotions as when we were younger.
Yeah. And I think that's a really important mission of women of our generation as pioneers for creating a new reality. So part of my mission is to be an example for my daughter and to change and heal things if you like that women that went before me were not able to do. There's certain things that I've that I have vowed not to pass on to my daughter, certain attitudes and beliefs and stories about what's possible for her as a woman.
Yeah. And when I look back on my maternal line I can see a lot of similarities between the stories of my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother. I don't know any further back than that, but I see a lot of similarities in the stories of their lives. And that's fascinating. Patterns get passed from generation to generation.
And there's something kind of comforting about that too, in a way, because it places me in a narrative of, Oh, yeah, these are the women that I belong to. But I can also see that there's much of those narratives that haven't served them and have prevented them from achieving things that they hoped and dreamed and desired secretly to do but we're not permitted to because of the beliefs that they had about what a woman was capable of, what a woman was able to do and achieve and what her life should look like. And my daughter's been born into a world that's so vastly different. And so I think it's really imperative that I do all I can do to show her that she can do absolutely whatever she wants.
And of course, my mom said that to me. She said, you can do whatever you want with your life. She didn't believe it for her. So part of my being has been working against that. Well, you know, if my mom doesn't believe it's possible for her, how can it be possible for me? So there's been this kind of conflicting conversation within my brain for many years, the story that says, this is how your life is going to look, and this other part of me, it's like, I know, but there's so much more I want to do and achieve. And so making that gesture stronger. is a mission. It's hard work. I think for all of the women in our generation to be thinking in that way so that our future women can have a completely different experience of their later life.
Yes, for sure. It is so empowering to show that example. And I mean, you have done a lot to show your daughter already the fact that you decided to completely change your career and become a life coach. Right. And we both did that in like, late 40s or I was 50 when I started, but it's a relatively late decision for many people.
They think that I can't change my career. I'm already 45 so showing your daughter, yes, you can, you can do what you want. Because it's true that it's much stronger when someone shows us that they can do it so we can start thinking if she can, then I can as well.
And that also goes for relationships because when I speak to women who feel guilty towards their children because they had a divorce and where I think it's so powerful to show them, especially show the daughters that you do not have to stay in a relationship that doesn't work and life does not end by divorce. You can get out on the other side and create something new on your own. Being a single mom for a couple of years and showing what that is and what you're capable of as a single woman building a new life is also one of the things that I feel is so important because, otherwise we have this belief that even though we know intellectually that you don't have to accept things, you don't have to tolerate a relationship that doesn't work and where you can't solve the problems, we know we don't have to do that, but still, if we can see this is what our parents did. It can be difficult. I know from myself that I sometimes can see when I look back on my relationships that I stayed too long. Because my parents also stayed. couple of years longer at least than when they probably should have got divorced so showing the good example is so, so powerful.
Yeah. I've had lots and lots of conversations with women and clients about this exact subject. So my parents divorced when I was about 13 and for many years, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. I carried a lot of shame about it because society said a good family should be a mom and dad and the children.
In the UK we had a prime minister at the time who was talking about this ideal of family values to the extent that they even created a tax break for married people. So if you were married, you had tax breaks. So there were all these kinds of external reasons why it was really good to be married.
And then, the media and the government were creating moral panics around single moms and just how terrible all of that was. So. It was a big story about how bad it was to be a single mom, how bad it was to be from a broken home, even that term, a broken home, right? So when I left my daughter's father, I was like, Oh gosh, and my mom even said to me, history is repeating itself. And in that moment, I said to myself, no way, there's no way it's repeating itself. And so I did go on a quest and I was asking why would God, the universe, whoever is that bigger force out there that's greater than me, put me in a really, I was in a very difficult, abusive relationship with my daughter's father, why would the universe put me in that relationship to make a baby and make me stay there for the rest of my life. And I came to the conclusion that it was nothing to do with me, but it was more to do with the child had chosen me and her father to be together. And once we had done that, that was our sacred contract, if you like, we were no longer required to be in a relationship living together. And that over the years has given me so much peace because it helped me make peace with a very difficult relationship and knowing that my daughter had a really loving relationship with her father and a loving relationship with me.
And now he's passed. He died about three years ago and we still have a loving relationship with him. And I am so grateful that she chose me and him to do this work. And so we raised her together, even though we weren't together. And now I'm in a new relationship that's for me. And that, to change my relationship with how I saw myself as a single mom was life changing for me.
That is so powerful when we change how we see things and the narrative, the story we tell ourselves about the past. Instead of having all these guilty thoughts about why did it happen and why was it with him? Why did I stay so long or whatever is going on that we can see? Okay. This is the narrative that works for me. This is the narrative that gives me meaning and relieves me for all these negative, heavy emotions and empowers me to move on. Most of my clients, they are 40 plus and they of course have a history.
We all have a past and we get to this point. We need to take a look at what has happened in the past and make peace with that in order to move forward in a good way. And unfortunately many of us have this story that we are over 40 and we're single again, then that means we've been a failure in relationships.
They have all, you know, all of them have ended, because, now we're single again and that can really block us in finding new love because then we expect it to happen again. We have this idea it's just a question of time because it never works out for me and so on. So creating a new narrative about our past, because there's so many different ways we can see that. I mean, we can't change the past, but there's so many ways we can change how we see it. That has so much potential, right? To really change also how we see ourselves.
Absolutely. I had one client who said to me, marrying that person was the worst thing I ever did, it was the biggest mistake I ever made. And they had so much shame and regret about having married this person and stayed in their marriage. And I said to her, but you wouldn't have your children if you hadn't married this person. And the brain is so primed to go and look for the negatives and all the things that went wrong and all the things we should have done differently, completely missing all the amazing things that we've also created.
And that's, I think, where the work is, the mindset in relationships, in perimenopause, to look at what is working. And that doesn't mean we gloss over things that aren't working. What we can do is look at what isn't working and make decisions about them and have boundaries about them and put things in place that will make them feel more aligned with who we are and feel correct for us and supportive for us and then turn our attention to what feels better.
That sounds so great. I wanted to dive into both of these actually, both the things that you have experienced with clients and so on that might not be working so well or where we need the boundaries and how to overcome these challenges. And then also all the upsides, all the things that are actually working, maybe even working so much better than what we give it credit for that we tell ourselves.
So if we start with the boundaries and the things where we need to work a little bit on overcoming some challenges and see how do I navigate this? What are some of the typical challenges that your clients experience?
So one thing I see a lot is women who have put on weight in perimenopause, where they had never done before, and suddenly they're putting on weight and their body is holding weight differently.
Holding weight differently, sorry to interrupt. What does that mean? Well, it means that they're putting it on more rapidly, and not losing it. So maybe their weight has been stable, pretty much stable for most of their life. They haven't been overweight. They haven't been underweight. They've been kind of stable and they've taken care of their diet as well. So they haven't eaten lots of junk food. They haven't been binge eating. And then suddenly the weight's coming on, they're gaining weight and it's confusing and upsetting and they don't know what to do about it.
And also have experienced that it sits, that's what I thought you meant. It sits differently. Like you have a flat ass and a round stomach instead of the opposite, You want the round ass and the flat stomach. Yes!
So there it is on the stomach and the client is saying to me; I don't know what to do about this. I feel terrible, and they're beating themselves up, typically, and trying this, trying to do the same things that they always did. So three solid meals a day, you know, plenty of fruit and vegetables, green juice, spirulina, all the great things. And what's been really fascinating is to help a client see that what she did in her thirties and forties was amazing and isn't working the same way now because her whole physiology is different, her hormones are different.
And so we have been creating new food protocols, which means being more boundaried and disciplined with ourselves or boundaried and disciplined with ourselves in a different way. And for some women this starts off as, Oh my God, why do I have to do this again? But what they're missing is that they already have the skill of being boundaried and disciplined, and we just get to apply it again. So this new challenge. So that's been something I've seen quite a lot of, and how to meet that in a different way. You know, it's not because they're doing anything wrong because of who they are, it's because they haven't understood that their whole physiology needs something different.
Yeah. And so that's often required a little bit of research into what that different thing might be and then how to apply that. Because we get used to eating in one way, right? And we get used to our body being a certain way. And then suddenly it's behaving differently. And we're like, huh?
Yeah. It's becoming much more difficult to get rid of those, whether it's a COVID, extra COVID weight or whatever we call it, it can stay with us for a long time.
Yeah. Here's the other thing around weight as well that I have coached on, and I've coached myself on it as well, is that I've made a new relationship to being a bit heavier than I was for a long time. So I'm now about a stone heavier than I was, say five years ago.
A stone. How many kilos? Oh, 14 pounds. Okay. So that's around seven kilos.
But I don't make that mean anything bad about myself. I'm more like, oh, look, look at my new female body.
Yeah, that's so great. I think that we're probably also better skilled to embrace that about our self, look at our self in the mirror and not having these expectations of looking like we were 18 years old, right? Because we also have a lot of different life experiences. So look at our self with more self love.
But of course, for some women it is something that requires a lot of work to get to that. So when you say you can embrace the heavier version of yourself, then what are some mindset that you came up with in order to be able to do that?
Well, I always love to go and get data first because your brain can't argue with data.So I bought myself a set of bathroom scales that tells me my weight and it tells me how much is body fat, how much is water and how much is bone. And when I looked at myself on the scale, I was like, oh, some of this is fat, but some of it is bone and some of it is water and some of it's muscle and what I want to do is have more of myself weighing muscle than fat and so just first of all remembering that when my brain was going to oh You're so fat, you've put on all this weight. I'm like, whoa whoa not all of the body is fat. Some of it is bone, some of it is water, some of it is muscle. So yeah, just getting facts about what makes up all of the weight.
But you also do a lot of exercises. You do weights and I guess you still do the running and things like that. And so of course there's a logic behind you gaining muscle, and that's actually very, very good in perimenopause, right, to build our muscle because it can be difficult and we're working against the physiology there. If we do nothing, as I understand, we're just going to lose muscle. We have to actually exercise to just maintain the muscle mass we have, which again is going to stabilise the bone structure and prevent us from falling and, you know, having accidents and so on. So if we think like into the long future, muscle is really, really important. So looking at the scale and say, okay, I gained this much muscle. Instead of I gained this much fat, that's a clever way of doing it.
Yeah. And like you say, knowing that that muscle is helping me in the longer term future. So whatever we do now, and this applies at any time of our life for any human being, whatever we do now is going to have a result in our future.
And so if we can think, what is the result I want in my future? So what do I need to do now? The example I always give is making my bed, right? I love to make my bed when I get up in the morning. I do it before I even get out, I'm fully out of bed. I plump my pillows and smooth my duvet. Okay. And I think about myself when I'm going to bed, which is my future self. Oh, she's gonna go to bed and she's gonna have this lovely like I make it like a hotel, so it's crisp. But we do the same with pensions and hobbies that we're learning now and experiences, friendships that we're making now, you know, what do we want our life to look like in the future? And what can we do today?
And for me, I have an aunt who's 81 and she hasn't lost any height. She still walks two or three miles a day, quite briskly as well. And I know it's a result of all the yoga she did in her thirties and forties, which then that was quite trailblazing. Not many people did yoga that all that time ago. Yeah, this would be 50 years ago. So I look at her and I think, gosh, if I want to be like her in my eighties, I need to be doing this now.
Yeah, Again, you have someone who shows you the example.
And so this is something that I talk to my clients about as well, if they're in a rushing hurry to feel better and not have any symptoms now I'm just like whoa, whoa, whoa, it's okay because everything you do now will have a cumulative effect to where you want to be in the future. So just keep that in mind and be consistent which doesn't mean going to the gym five days a week every single day. Just a regular practice of whatever it is you're choosing to do to keep yourself fit and healthy and strong.
Yeah. I love that. This is like keeping their eyes on the long term goal and not being too worried about what is right here, wanting the results quickly. As in so many areas of life, when there's urgency and we need to shift really fast, that's a warning sign to ourselves. We need to look at why is that, and then the compound effect it's also important that even we don't see the result right now, it's going to come and it's going to, you know, you will see it after some time. And when you, we go into the future, like with the pension it's something that's a really long term investment.
Yeah. And the easiest way to see this is to look at where you are now compared to where you were five or 10 years ago. Then you can see the effect of it. You can't see it where you are now in terms of where you want to be necessarily.
So coming back again to this narrative about ourself getting older, and already the word older I was looking for. Is there another word?
How about we're maturing.
Yeah, we're maturing and, or we can just say, old is not bad because I mean, what is the alternative is that you no longer live. It's good to become old and become really old. And also love that you reminded me of this midlife. We're in the middle of life. And in our generation, we do have potential to live much longer. It's not like we have 20 years and then it's over. But I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the mindset or the thoughts about ourselves, how we can value ourselves more and not see ourselves as someone who's now we're turning into grey, we're gaining weight and we're less interesting, we're no longer fertile and so on.
Because when you said that before we talked about there were some boundaries, things to work on, but there are also some things that work really well and maybe even better than when we were younger. What are some things where you feel that this is actually so much better? This is where it's so much nicer to be in our fifties than in our twenties.
Yeah. So I really love time and space. And now I have my own business and my daughter's left home and it's just me and my partner living here and to be able to schedule time that is true downtime and rest time, and not feel guilty about it at all, not feel like, Oh, I should be doing this thing with this person. And there are other people who are saying, I want to spend time with you, Jo. And I don't feel one ounce of bad about saying to them, I'm not available today. It becomes so much easier to prioritise myself. I think I look back on my life thus far and think, golly gosh, I've worked hard.
And so this is time for me to take care of myself. And I think a lot of women find that when their children have left home and they've ended one part of their career, they're like, oh, What happened to me? I was doing all this stuff for other people now and a lot of women get to this point in life and they feel kind of empty, like there's nothing for them because they've been giving, giving, giving to so many people all of the time they don't know how to give to themselves. So that's something that I do work on with my clients is teaching them how to give something to themselves Which doesn't come naturally for a lot of women.
No. So all of a sudden having all this, space and time and becoming better prioritising ourselves and deciding this is what I want to do now. I don't have to feel guilty about, you know, someone else wanting you to do whatever they want.
Yeah. And I know if I've taken really good rest, then I have so much more to give afterwards. So an example, we hosted a wedding party, a bridal party here at my home on Saturday. My daughter's best friend got married and we live near the venue where they got married. So we opened up our home, the bride and her mother and all the bridesmaids of which my daughter was one came here and got ready.
And it was so lovely. It was just gorgeous. And then my partner and I went to the do in the evening and we were out till I don't know 11 o'clock, which is a late night for me. Really late night for me. And we've been on the go since 6 a. m. In my thirties. I'd be up 6am. to 11pm. No problem. Probably 2 a. m. No, can't do that now. And so on Sunday, I still wake up at 6am, whatever time I've gone to bed now, that's just how my system is programmed these days. Okay. And I said to my partner, I'm gonna put on the noise cancelling headphones. While you watch a movie, I'm going to listen to an audio book and I sat in the chair looking out of the window at the sea, listening to an audio book.
And I think I did some knitting and I doodled in a notebook and I stared at the sea and I did that nearly all day. And on Monday, Tuesday and today's Wednesday, I’ve felt so energised and I know it's because I took. really intentional rest on Sunday.
It's rest where you do something, you don't just sleep, but like low level activity and things that you choose that are for you.
Yeah, and I kind of let myself get into flow. So I'm not ticking off a list of things to do. I'm just following where my soul wants to go. So like maybe I'll sit and just paint my nails or flick through a book or look at some pictures. I've got a nice collection of photography books. So just, let my brain just flow, flow, flow. And that was so lovely. And also I'm blessed. I have a very supportive partner who is like, you do that, you take that.
But helping other clients do this too. That's been a big piece of work for some women because it doesn't come naturally and they, forget their partner, like they have to live with themselves and their own thoughts about who does that. Who takes rest for themselves? I can't be that lazy. I've got so much else to do. These are all the other kind of stories they're telling themselves. If I don't tick off this great list of things, what will people think of me?
Yeah. or even what will I think of myself, knowing that the windows need to be washed and you can see there are things that I should, so to speak, be doing, but I choose to rest.
What's been helpful, I think, is knowing that in whatever's on our list, we will never get it complete. There's always more things to do. Always. So relax, because the things that need to be done, they'll still be there. And if they really need to be done, they'll still be there and maybe they won't.
And I have to say, like the way I'm telling you about my day on Sunday sounds like a bit easy breezy, but there have been times when I've done that and it's felt really uncomfortable to me too. Because my brain is like, ah, but if I don't get all this stuff done, what will I think about myself? It'll be never ending. And so allowing myself to feel the discomfort of that and taking my rest anyway. And so I think this is a period of our life where we can allow our self to feel negative emotion on purpose. This is not just about feeling bright and happy all the time. We can also feel uncomfortable.
And that, I think you have to explain a little bit what that means.
So what I teach in my practice is to let yourself feel uncomfortable. So there are some things that I can't do in a way that I used to. I was a marathon runner. I can't run 26. 2 miles anymore. I get really tired from it. And for a long period of time, I was really sad about that.
Not only was I sad, I was arguing with it. I should still be able to do that. This is the story my brain was telling me, and that felt terrible as well. And it felt terrible because I didn't want to feel sad about not being able to run a marathon. So we got this kind of two layers to it.
There's always this like sadness, which was, which I experienced as a kind of loss in a way, but my body and my brain didn't want to feel that loss. So it got mad about it. And that felt even worse.
That's such a great example. And because it's very much, I agree. It's very much in this tendency that we should be happy all the time and we can't allow space for negative emotions. And that just feels so fake when we can't do that, we need to have that space. And maybe, other people feel uncomfortable about that, but at least what we can do for ourself, give ourself the space to feel it, and allow the negative emotions so that the positive can feel more true.
Yeah. And I think this is a way that we can be really intimate with our self and really have compassion for our self and be tender with our self, and I like to think that we get to be our own best friend. So we would never say to our own best friend, pick yourself up, pull yourself together, we wouldn't talk to them like that. We would say, Oh, you know, that's really sad. That really hurts. Yeah. We would be tender with them. And so being like that with our self. That is so true.
It's so valuable because this is also what I teach my clients to be their own best partner or their own person before even looking for someone else, because we are responsible for ourselves. I mean, we are our person that we need to take care of our whole life. And, that's one thing that's for sure we always have to live with ourselves until we die. So it is really important to be able to have that inner dialogue and conversation and sit with our self and comfort our self. You can call it parent also reparent our self or whatever we call it. But when we learn how to allow all these negative emotions and to be able to soothe our self and pick our self up again and move on in a new way, that is so powerful,
And, if you want to share one last word or advice for women who are either about to go through this turbulent time in their life, or who are in the middle of it, is there something more you would like to share before we end the conversation?
Yeah, well, I'd really like to share, is to arm yourself with facts about yourself. So make sure that you have data about yourself. So think about weight, sleep, what you're eating, what you're consuming, what you're drinking. And ask yourself, is it working for you, from a curious point of view, like, is this working for me still?
And if not, what else could I try differently? So in our coach training, we were taught a way of approaching our business called the Scientific Method. And that says we think of a result that we want to achieve in our business, we posit a theory, we go and test it. The same thing applies to our wellness. So we think of the result that we want. So for me, I want to weigh three and a half more kilos of muscle, and I have an idea that the way I'm going to achieve that is by eating more protein and working out three times a week at the gym. So I'm testing it. And I'm gonna test it till the end of this year.
And at the end of this year, I'm gonna see, did it work? Great. If so, I'm gonna keep doing that. Did it not work? Okay. What do I need to change? And this prevents you from beating yourself up when you're not getting the outcome that you want. So you can just try something and see if it works, but you have to give it time.
You have to try it. So know what it is you want first as a health and well being outcome, give yourself an idea of how that's and you know, if you're in perimenopause, you've got a lot of knowledge and experience right now. So ask yourself how could I do that? Go and try it. But be committed to it, be committed to testing it many ways and then analyse the results afterwards. Analyse the data.
Yeah and there are two things here, both the one about the data is not beating our self up for not being good enough. We are evaluating the method that we chose, and the other thing is to wait until the end of the time, like being committed and then evaluate how did it go? Because we evaluate every day, then of course, as we talked about before, the long term investment is not going to show up on day two.
Yeah. I think this was so interesting, and we could go on forever. There's so much to talk about within this area. I know a lot of my listeners are going to love hearing this and can of course also reach out to you because you're taking clients, I guess.
I am. Yeah, I work with one on one clients and I've just launched a new product called a Wellness Review. So it's like a one off coaching session for £50 or $50 or 50 wherever you are.
You sign up and I'll send you a questionnaire. It's a long questionnaire. You're going to need about 45 minutes to fill it in. And it's got four sections looking at your physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. You fill that in and then I'll send you back some coaching and feedback in the form of a video and audio and a PDF guide to give you some tips and coaching to help you start on a new trajectory through your perimenopause.
Wow, that sounds really cool. So that's like an all round evaluation and very personalised support. That's great. And so, I will of course put in the show notes, your contact information, or maybe you want to share, where can people find you?
Yeah. I like to hang out on Instagram. It's @jo_renshaw and my website is jorenshaw.com.
Thank you so much, Jo, and for having this chat. I'm sure that we probably will talk again another time.
We can talk a lot more about this. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
